Dion Brown, the new president of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, has only been in town a few weeks — too soon, he says, to formulate specific exhibition programming ideas.
Coming here from St. Louis, where he was founding executive director of the National Blues Museum, he does know that one of his goals will be to establish stability in his position; he says he’s committed to staying at least until 2026. Another is to get the membership of the Freedom Center, which merged with Cincinnati Museum Center in 2012, up to 3,000. (It’s currently at 1,380, up from 830 in 2016.)
He also believes the Freedom Center has an important story to tell about what’s happening in the world right now, as well as informing about the United States’ history of slavery and racial discrimination.
As far as that history, the Freedom Center is bringing in two exhibitions on April 6 that address it, Confederate Currency: The Color of Money and Confederate Memory: Symbols, Controversy & Legacy.
Fittingly, given his background, Brown also would like to incorporate more live music into the Freedom Center’s offerings. That would include free outdoor concerts, with local talent, as a way to introduce the institution to more people. But another possibility is bringing bigger-name, revenue-producing acts to the Freedom Center’s Harriet Tubman Theater.
Brown is eager to talk about music museums — and he has insight to share. Before the National Blues Museum, he was executive director of the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center in Indianola, Miss. (It opened in 2008.) Brown turned to a second career in museum management after working in administrative/IT services for the U.S. Air Force.
He arrives in Cincinnati as the long-simmering effort to create a museum for the old King Records label gains some momentum. The city has been negotiating a land swap with the company that currently owns the cluster of empty buildings in Evanston that once housed King, renowned for several decades after World War II for its R&B and country artists, including James Brown.
The Freedom Center’s Brown says he knows little about local efforts to create such a museum, but he can offer observations and advice based on his own experience. “One thing I’ve seen is music unites people,” he says.
First things first for a music museum, he explains, is to line up funding. “You have to have the funding in place beforehand,” he says. “The idea for that museum in St. Louis had been around since 2010. But permanent exhibits are expensive; you’ve got to collect artifacts.”
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the $13 million museum finally opened after having received $5 million from tax credit financing and $7 million in private donations, including $6 million from Pinnacle Entertainment, which had owned the city’s Lumière Place Casino.
Brown found that the Blues concerts sponsored by the museum helped it build its following — and not just among those who were there. “We used live streaming for our programs and concerts on Friday, and people watched and sent in donations,” he says.
The B.B. King Museum, which opened when the Delta bluesman still was alive, could count on the fact he was an instantly recognizable, iconic entertainer — an American hero — in order to draw initial attendance. But it’s in a tiny town, so it must draw from a far wider area. To do that, the museum made sure its narrative was larger than just his life story.
“It has B.B. King artifacts, but once you get in there, it teaches about how the Blues affected all genres of music,” Brown says. “And it was talking about what was going on in the world during his lifetime — civil rights, the Vietnam War. Throughout, he’s a hook and it’s telling a story about what was going on.”
While he never worked there, Brown is familiar with Memphis’ Stax Museum of American Soul Music, which opened in 2003 and recreates the home of the old, classic Stax Records label on the inner-city-neighborhood spot where it had been located.
“That’s where history was made at, that’s where you tell the story,” Brown says. “And it revitalizes that area.”
Contact Steven Rosen: srosen@citybeat.com
This article appears in Mar 14-21, 2018.
